


september

by violentthing



Category: I Don't Know How But They Found Me (Band), Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, it's about this hot new ot3 i'm pursuing and it's called brallon x healthy fucking communication, kenny is mentioned because he's a dickbag but make no mistake this fic isn't about him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17189618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentthing/pseuds/violentthing
Summary: Flying to LA is, objectively, one of the worst decisions Dallon has made in his life—and there are quite a few contenders for that position.





	september

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to only be a oneshot to help me work through some shit but then it got longer and longer because i haven't written a short piece of fiction in my entire life so here we are now
> 
> sorry

Flying to LA is, objectively, one of the worst decisions Dallon has made in his life _—_ and there are quite a few contenders for that position.

He doesn’t know what he expects to happen. He doesn’t let himself think that far. All he knows is that he feels angry and he feels betrayed and he very much would like to punch something, but he’s trying to be an adult about this because Lord knows, he hasn’t been the best about that in these last few years.

He doesn’t need to visit. Dan confirmed all his worst suspicions over the phone already, his voice weary as he recounted that day as though having told it too many times. Dallon knew most of it, knew all the vile rumors made sharper by Kenny’s damning silence, thanks to messages from friends he hadn’t spoken to in months, thanks to frantic questions from fans, filled to the brim with hurt and incomprehension and anger _—_ not at him, not truly, but a loaded undercurrent of ‘ _You didn’t know about this? You didn’t know about Kenny?_ ’ _—_ but to hear it from Dan directly is another thing entirely.

And Dallon would like to think that he knows people and he knows how people work and what makes them do the things they do, but in this, he comes up short. There is an immediate gut-jerk reaction of denial, because he  _knows_  the guy, he spent five years of his life with him in tiny busses and hotel rooms across the world, but if Dallon really should have learned anything by now, it’s that you can be friends with someone for a decade without ever truly knowing them.

Breezy doesn’t argue with him when he fills a backpack with a change of clothes and toiletries, but there is a disapproving edge to her silence as she watches him leave. She doesn’t agree. He gets that. But he isn’t traveling to the west coast for reconciliation, no matter what she thinks. That chapter is done.

He left the band and he left it without any intention to ever look back on it, much less the debris of his and Brendon’s friendship. He doesn’t have to face that.

(And despite it all, Dallon stills feels a glimmer of responsibility for Brendon. He knows that Brendon needs support, he has always needed support to thrive, and despite the abyss between them, there is a part of him that wants to  _help_. If Brendon called today and asked for it, Dallon would offer it without a second thought. It’s ingrained in him like muscle memory.)

The Uber drops him off in Encino: familiar, rich Encino. Dallon takes a few minutes to let the LA summer heat soak into his skin and to watch the palm trees move in the breeze amidst the mansions, still all surface gleam and beauty. He’s sweating in his leather jacket and his layers of clothing. He sticks out like a sore thumb, dressed in his sensible autumn clothes. But he has always stuck out here, even when he still remembered how to dress for west coast weather.

LA has its charms, that much is true, but it’s a charm of pointed teeth and glinting eyes; a smile that’s too bright while the ground crumbles under your feet. Even just visiting now, Dallon feels like he’s on that precipice again, one wrong step away from crashing. He spent too much time tip-toeing here to ever feel comfortable. The only thing that feels like home in this city is Ryan, but that’s not who he’s here for.

He walks up to the front door of the residence, indistinguishable from the other houses in the opulent gleam of Encino, and rings the doorbell before his thoughts can get the better of him. He resists the urge to turn on his heels and walk away again. He’s here now.

He doesn’t hear the dogs barking. Maybe it’s the wrong house, he thinks, staring at the ‘Urie’ engraved into the metal nameplate under the doorbell.

It’s Sarah who opens the door. She almost drops the mason jar she’s holding, her grip frantically shifting around the glass as her eyes widen, startlingly blue. “Dallon!” she says.

Dallon pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. A line of sweat runs cold down his back. He doesn’t try to smile. He’s unlearning that terrible instinct to smile pretty and stay silent when something hurts him. He’s not going to fall back into that hole the minute he’s faced with his past. “Hey,” he says. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, of course not! Come in!” Sarah is almost frantic in opening the door for him. She sets the mason jar down on a hall cabinet and reaches out and tugs him inside at his shoulder, pulling him into a brief hug that he barely has time to reciprocate before she’s already moving again. “Would you like something to drink?”

Dallon tries to not be too obvious in the way he surveys the house as she leads him through it. He’s been here only once after he moved away from California, for that last conversation with Brendon and Zack, that uncomfortable talk of contracts and goodbyes and new bands. “A glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble?”

She smiles at him. “Of course not. Come, sit down. Give me your jacket.”

He slowly sits down at the dining table, eyes focused on the piano on the other end of the room. Brendon isn’t anywhere he can see, and he doesn’t ask.

Sarah is moving in the kitchen, metal and glass clinking as she works.

“Did you fly in from Utah?” Sarah asks. She sets the glass of water down in front of him and slowly sits down on the opposite side of the table, sleeves tugged over her hands, wrapped around a cup of coffee. “You are living in Salt Lake City again, right?”

“Yeah, back home.” He tears his eyes away from the ivory and black of the piano keys, away from the faint memory of listening to Brendon playing them songs he’d written. He takes a sip of water, but his throat feels tight and dry with anticipation.

“That’s nice,” Sarah says. “So, what are you doing in LA? I haven’t seen you here in a while.”

“I’m visiting Ryan. My bandmate.” It’s not a complete lie. He  _is_  going to visit Ryan. He is in town after all. Causation and correlation and all those neat little things.

“That has to suck, to have to fly down here to get the band together.”

“It’s fine. He’s working on moving back up to Utah next year, so that’ll make things easier for both of us.” Ryan doesn’t mind LA as much as Dallon does, but he misses Utah, too. It will be nice to have him back around. He’s as much of an uncle to Dallon’s children as his actual brother. “It’s not a band visit, though. I just wanted to visit my friend.”

“That’s nice,” Sarah says again, in that same tone of voice _—_ a little too bright, a little too happy. There’s fatigue in her eyes that even the makeup on the shadows around them can’t hide.

Dallon can’t look at her for too long. It’s too much of a reminder of the things he left behind on the west coast, of that toxic mindset winding itself through the industry, of faking a smile rather than allowing even one moment of weakness. They’re all too good at that, himself included. “I wanted to check in with you guys while I’m here,” he says, slowly. “Considering the circumstances.”

Sarah’s smile falters and disappears. The polite, conversational air leaves the room in a single sickening rush. She was waiting for him to bring this up. “You heard about what happened.” It’s not a question.

“I did. Dan called me, but it was all over Twitter, too.”

“It’s fucked up,” Sarah says. There’s a glint in her eyes, like something awakening, and then her face twists, truly angry for the first time in all the years Dallon has known her, and she shakes her head. The beds of her nails grow white around the pretty ceramic of the cup. “I never thought- you think you know a person, y’know? I haven’t seen Brendon this upset in a long time.”

Dallon bites his tongue at the mention of him. “I can imagine.”

Sarah looks at him over the rim of her cup and her expression softens. The sharpest edges of her anger sooth over. “He’s out with the dogs,” she says. At Dallon’s startled look upwards, she clarifies: “Brendon. He needed to clear his head. There’s been so much to do these past days, so many meetings with the legal teams and the label, he needed a break. He’ll be back soon.”

“I can come back another day,” Dallon says, and he hates the way this feels like a retreat. He’s not a coward. He’s not afraid of confrontation. He prefers if it doesn’t happen and he’s spent a lot of time side-stepping most arguments, but he’s not afraid of them. It was never worth the hassle while he was in the band. Not worth the heartache and the awkwardness of tension with his employers when he could just as well swallow his pride. He wanted things to work out so badly. As it turns out, he shouldn’t have bothered.

He hadn’t actually planned for how long he is going to stay in LA. Ryan and his roommate probably have a couch he can sleep on if he doesn’t want to waste the money on an overpriced hotel, but maybe he’ll just book the next available flight from LAX and break this entire attempt off. He knows signs when he sees them. If this is the universe telling him that he’s an idiot and never should have bothered to come here, then he’ll listen and turn back.

But Sarah reaches out over the table and touches his arm. “Don’t be stupid,” she says, teasingly, “you can stay for dinner. We didn’t have anything planned, so I’ll probably just prepare some pasta. That okay for you?”

“I wouldn’t want to be in the way.”

“You’re not. I’m glad you’re here. I’m sure Brendon will think so as well.” She squeezes his arm and pulls back. “It’s been a while, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dallon says, voice flat. “It’s been a while.”

 

* * *

 

Sarah busies herself with preparing dinner while Dallon tries very hard to immerse himself in his phone, doing a quick Q&A over Twitter that leaves him only more jittery than before. It’s too soon after and there are too many questions about Panic that he has to dodge. He closes Twitter after only a few answers. Breezy called while he was on the plane, but he swipes that notification away as well.

He rubs a finger along his eyelid, feeling the beginning sting of a headache blooming behind his eyes.

A key turns in the front door.

Sarah is back in the living room in an instant, pausing as she catches his eye. “Let me handle this,” she says with a weak smile, and then she continues on to the hall. Two dogs yap in a cacophony of noise at her arrival, almost drowning out the hushed conversation.

Dallon looks down into his glass of water and attempts to ignore the way his heart is racing a staccato beat against his rib cage. His hand clenches around it at the distant sound of Brendon’s voice. They spoke at Reading when they met backstage, but it was awkward and cut short by their busy schedules (and Ryan swooping in to get Dallon out of that tent, fingers gripping too tightly around his elbow as he led Dallon past the band, the soft whisper of “Hey, are you okay?” once they were out of dodge). It was nice to finally meet Nicole, at least, and to see Dan again. He doesn’t think of Kenny. If he stops and thinks about him, he’ll probably throw something or punch someone.

He never thought of himself as a violent man, but he isn’t so sure of that anymore. There was a lot of anger in him for so many years, so much pent-up frustration surging without an outlet, drained completely of the inspiration and creativity that used to help him. He’s slowly getting that back, that passion for music and for writing. It’s nice to be able to play his own songs to a crowd that screams his texts back at him with glowing eyes and glitter on their faces. It helps.

He got out of the toxic depths of an industry that was drowning him and he’s better now, he’s freer now, he has more support now.

There’s a noise.

Dallon looks up, brushing his hair back out of his eyes, and meets Brendon’s gaze.

Time doesn’t stop, but the air seems to shift, seems to pull tighter around them.

Brendon stands in the doorway to the living room, one hand curled tightly into the doorframe as he stares at Dallon. His face is pale. “What the fuck,” he says, and his voice is raspy and raw and strained with what sounds like several days of too little sleep and too much alcohol.

“I told you, don’t freak out, babe,” Sarah says. She squeezes past Brendon and picks up her empty cup from the table. The dogs follow at her heels and then turn their attention to Dallon, greeting him with wagging tails and eager barking. “Dinner is almost ready. Dallon, can you help me set the table?”

Dallon pushes his chair back and stands up, wincing at the creak of his knees.

“What the fuck is he doing here?”

Dallon brings his hands around the back of the chair. He’s cold under Brendon’s gaze, cold and insecure and unsure like he used to feel in those first few weeks of playing for Panic, tip-toeing around Brendon and Spencer, tip-toeing around the wounded anger in their eyes, around their fame. Strangers. They’re as good as strangers now. He doesn’t know this man in front of him and he knows him too well at the same time _—_ he knows the way Brendon trembles when he cries, knows the enthusiastic glint in his eyes when something finally clicks when they’re writing, but he doesn’t know this man, doesn’t know if it’s still the same man he left standing on this porch the last time he was in LA, feeling his eyes in his back as he got into the passenger seat of Ryan’s car. “I came to visit Ryan,” he says. “Thought I’d stop by.” The more often he says it, the more he almost believes it himself.

Brendon only continues to stare.

Sarah’s gaze flutters between the two of them, her ocean eyes glinting as they finally come to rest on Brendon. “Dallon’s staying for dinner,” she says pleasantly, voice sharpened to an edge. “Why don’t you help him find the dishes while I finish up here?”

Dallon sees the exact moment Brendon finishes building up his walls again and the mask slips back into place, all that unguarded shock disappearing behind flawless shutters. Brendon smiles and it crinkles the skin around his eyes. “Shit, dude, you made me forget all my good Mormon manners.” He crosses the living room and holds out a hand. “Sorry ‘bout that. It’s so good to see you, man, you look great.”

Dallon shakes it, numb to the core.

Brendon is good at idle chatter and he fills Dallon’s silence effortlessly. “I didn’t know you’d be in LA. How long are you staying? I would have prepared a city tour or something.”

“Not long.” Brendon is still holding his hand, grip firm. It’s all Dallon can focus on. “I’ll probably fly back tomorrow.”

And Brendon clasps his shoulder and squeezes and continues  _smiling_ , fond and fake. “At least you’re here now. Come on, let’s set the table before my wife kills me.” He glances at Sarah and rolls his eyes.

She scoffs in mock-annoyance and leaves them alone in the living room.

Brendon pulls his hand back.

Dallon reaches out and stops Brendon in his tracks.

Immediately, silence falls over them. Brendon stares down at where Dallon’s hand is curling around his arm and then he looks up, meeting Dallon’s gaze with raised eyebrows.

“You don’t have to do this,” Dallon says quietly. “This whole act.”

“What act?”

“Look,” Dallon says, “I’m leaving after dinner. I don’t know why I even bothered coming here, but it wasn’t to intrude on your space. You’ll be rid of me in no time, so just…just stop.”

Something falters in the mask of Brendon’s face. “You’re not intruding.”

Dallon lets go of him.

“You’re not,” Brendon says, more pointed this time. “I didn’t expect to see you again anytime soon, that’s all. You made that pretty fucking clear.”

Dallon winces, but he doesn’t react to the barbs in Brendon’s words. “Dan called me.”

Brendon closes his eyes. His chin drops, and he sighs, mouth twisting into a grimace. “About-”

“Yeah.”

“Dan asked you to come?”

Dallon tries to smile, wry and self-deprecating. “No, that was all me,” he says.

“Great,” Brendon says. He opens his eyes again. They’re hollow and dark with exhaustion, staring out towards the kitchen door without acknowledging Dallon. “That’s just fucking great.”

“I’ll be gone after dinner.” Dallon’s hand clenches down by his side. Breezy was right, in her disapproving silence: this was a useless effort, a dumb childish hope of fixing something that was never meant to be fixed. “I shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

Brendon’s eyes snap back to him. It was always an unsettling feeling to be the center of Brendon Urie’s rare moments of hyperfocus, to be at the receiving end of his ever-jumping attention. That hasn’t changed. “You should stay,” he says.

Dallon feels strangely unmoored. “Are you sure?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Brendon shrugs. “Might as well.”

Dallon doesn’t answer.

“Come on.” Brendon hands him a few plates from the cupboard and gives a small, tired smile. “Let’s eat. Then we’ll talk.”


End file.
